A new witness has come forward claiming she saw Tia Sharp leaving her grandmother's house alone on the day she disappeared.

At a press conference at Scotland Yard, Neil Basu, Borough Commander for South East London, said they had spoken to a witness who reported seeing Tia on the estate the day she disappeared leaving her grandmothers house in The Lindens, New Addington at about midday.

He said: "We are following up that sighting."

Tia, from Pollard's Hill, Mitcham, has been missing for six days afte disappearing on a shopping trip to Croydon.

Cmdr Basu said: "It goes without saying that this is an absolutely terrible time for Tia's family and friends who are all desperate for her to be found safe and well.

"At a very similar age my eldest son went missing for two hours. It was the worst two hours of my life. I can't imagine how this family are feeling after 5 days.

"The family want Tia home. They miss her dreadfully. We are doing everything we possibly can to find her and trying to support her family at this time."

Mr Basu said over the last three days he has redirected Olympic resources to help in the sesrch for Tia which has meant more than 100 officers in Croydon and Merton.

Another 80 officers are working on the case, 40 detectives and 40 specialist search officers.

He said "I will redirect more if necessary."

So far the police have sourced over 800 hours of CCTV footage and viewed 120 hours of that CCTV in live time.

He said: "That continues around the clock. There's still more to collect. This is a massive task and is incredibly time consuming but is a vital line of enquiry."

Mr Basu said the police had been searching the area 500m around Tia's grandmother's house using search dogs including garages, lock ups, local schools.



He said: "I want to thank the public for over 300 calls received in the incident room. We have now had 60 possible sightings of Tia.

"Everyone of those calls is being followed up."

When asked to confirm exactly who the last person to see Tia was, Mr Basu said he could not know for sure.

"That's part of the principal line of enquiry which means trawling through a massive amount of CCTV evidence.

"We cannot be absolutely sure who the last person was to see her leaving the estate was."

Mr Basu also confirmed that of the 60 reported sightings they were not able to confirm any of them as genuine.

He said: "This is a 12 year old vulnerable girl who has gone missing and I don't feel she will have left the area.
Our job is to find her alive and well and we are concentrating the search on where she was last seen."

Anyone with information should call the incident room on 0208 721 4005 or Missing People on 116 000 quoting reference 12MIS025216.